


A Night That We Can't Replace

by panchostokes (badwolfrun)



Series: Nick/Greg Ficlets [89]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 16:34:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30142398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/panchostokes
Summary: He had a lot of time to think in the box, until an infestation tore apart any of the life revelations he may have had...all except one.The one where he realized, that Nick Stokes loves Greg Sanders.
Relationships: Greg Sanders/Nick Stokes
Series: Nick/Greg Ficlets [89]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1257824
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	A Night That We Can't Replace

**Author's Note:**

> requested by an anon on tumblr, who asked for a fic about nick hopelessly pining after greg

There are a lot of things that changed for Nick in the summer of 2005. 

A burial that he’s still digging his way out of, his hands blindly reaching out for anything, anybody for him to grab onto with desperate fingers and a pounding heart that hasn’t stopped beating no matter how much damage was done to it. 

Lucky for him, plenty of people were reaching for him, too.

He connected with a lot of people after his latest near death experience, and it was hard not to given the circumstances. He couldn’t have prevented his parents from flying in when they were told about the kidnapping—though if it were up to him, they would be none the wiser just as they hadn’t known about the many gunpoint incidents or the stalker and they had come very close to finding out about the window fall before he made a rash decision to change his emergency contacts to someone who was in the city of Las Vegas that he trusted more than his own flesh and blood. 

He couldn’t have prevented the whole damn department showing up to the hospital, haunting the halls as they both protected him from harm and looked in on him to witness this miracle; the man who was buried in a coffin, _alive,_ and lived to tell the tale. 

And he most certainly _wouldn’t_ have prevented the core team from reuniting over his bedside in a vigil that he told them they needn’t waste in doing. He was fine. He wasn’t going anywhere. He’s happy to see them, and happy to be alive.

One by one they took their leave at his insistence—Warrick was the hardest to convince, and Nick knew that the minute he closed his eyes and opened them back up, he’d be back in a heartbeat and he loved him for that—but he asked Greg to stay, just for a minute.

He had a lot of time to think in the box, until an infestation tore apart any of the life revelations he may have had...all except one. 

The one where he realized, that Nick Stokes _loves_ Greg Sanders. 

He didn’t know how to go about saying it but at the same time he felt it didn’t _need_ to be said in a verbal sense; before Greg could get a single, nervous word in, his clammy, bumpy hands reached out and latched themselves onto Greg’s arms and pulled him into the box—No, he’s not in the box, not anymore, he’s in a bed, a bed with _Greg_ —and stole the air from his body because he’s suffocating and the fan is dead and he needs Greg, he needs to be with Greg, he needs Greg to want him back—

The one-sided kiss is broken off by Nick when he realizes that he could easily just be making a mistake, that Greg is just frozen in shock and not reciprocating, that this is all just a symptom of his oxygen-starved brain and soon his eyes will really open to expose the truth of his perpetual entrapment into a closeted darkness with only a green glowstick to give him any sort of light, because he shot out his chances a long time ago.

Perhaps he came on too strong, he thinks, when Greg does what he expected and runs out of the room.

He doesn’t talk to Greg for days. For weeks. For _months_ and it drives him mad. Grissom keeps sticking him on cases with somebody else, he keeps seemingly avoiding Nick whenever they see each other in the lab, and it’s not until he, Sara and Greg embark on a road trip for a case out of town that they finally confront each other.

But every moment in between a night he regrets and a night that he can’t replace is filled with a feeling he’s never quite felt before.

He’s had crushes, sure, and has moped around his house in his teenage years out of loneliness, and carved his name with another’s on tables and trees, and had wet dreams with whispers that can be heard by the eye that watches him from above, but he’s never struggled harder with his lust than his crush on Greg.

Looking back on it, he was helpless from the start. Hovering over shoulders, stolen glances from across the hall. Playful, teasing flirts that had a large amount of weight. The nicknames, the offerings and requests for assistance. The physical contact that only Nick can initiate or else it feels weird to him, but he’s never grabbed anybody’s shoulders as hard, or kept his hand on someone’s back as a show of support for longer than a second without making it weird.

And it's not like the other crushes he's had in the past, where he realizes that perhaps it wasn't a crush on the person he thought and yet another one that was right in front of him the whole time—his first homosexual experience and attraction to somebody was born out of his supposed crush on a sorority chick across the street—but this time, his admission of love has done nothing but haunted him and somehow made it _worse._

"Bro, you gotta stop doing that," Warrick told him one day while they were eating lunch in the breakroom.

"Doing what?"

"Those wide ass puppy dog eyes. Y'ain't gonna run outta soup cause you keep drooling into it. Just go and talk to him, man."

Nick shook his had.

"I can't. I-I made it too weird already."

"So? Sanders is weird enough as it is."

Nick nearly knocked over his bowl of soup.

"How do you know it's about Greg?" he choked.

"Oh, come _on,_ Nicky, you make it so obvious. _Just go and talk to him,"_ Warrick repeated.

 _"Warrick,"_ Nick growled.

"Look, here he comes now!" Warrick whispered, nudging Nick from across the table as Greg approached them.

"Hey, guys—"

"Hey, G!" Nick got up from his feet, a little too quickly, and Warrick slaps his arm and gestures for him to sit back down.

"Hey..." Greg started with a little more hesitation. "Grissom just handed us this case in Lincoln County. Sara said she'd meet us there, I figured to save gas maybe we could carpool?"

"I'll carpool with you!" Nick smiled with almost too much exuberance. "A-and hey, maybe we can save on motels, get a room together too—"

"It's...a quadruple homicide," Greg furrowed his eyebrows with a frown on his face.

"Yeah, good idea, Greg, we'll meet you in the garage," Warrick broke the tension and once Greg left, turned to Nick and asked with wild eyes, _"What the hell are you doing?"_

He really had no idea, just as he had no idea how the car ride would go anywhere other than a complete train-wreck, but to his absolute surprise, a miracle happened instead.

Warrick decided to drive out with Sara, using his wife as an excuse which is not the first time and wouldn't be the last, which left Nick and Greg alone to drive together to a small little town in Nowhere, Nevada. A life changing case for Nick that begins before they even leave Vegas.

"Greg, listen, I-I think before we go, we-we gotta talk..."

"Well, three hour drive, I figured that's what we'd be doing," Greg laughs. "Why have you been acting so weird lately?"

"Me? You're the one acting weird!" Nick squeaks. "It's-it's like you've been avoiding me ever since..."

"The hospital?"

"Yeah," Nick gulps.

"Nick...listen I just...I needed time, to you know...catch up to you. I mean, you got a head start, after all."

"Guess I did," Nick smiled sadly. "So...what do you—?"

Greg cuts Nick off with a kiss, not unlike the same one Nick gave him in the hospital. He breaks it off and leaves Nick hopelessly lingering for more.

"There's a lot I have to tell you, how I came to this...conclusion that I came to."

"Oh, really? And what exactly was that...conclusion?" Nick asks with another seductive lean towards Greg, a coy smile on his face because he knows exactly what Greg is thinking, because he's thinking it too.

Still, he wouldn't mind _hearing_ it.

"How about I begin at the beginning?"


End file.
